Monday, August 3, 2009

Flashback to 2007 for a look at what we can expect from Mamoru Oshii's "Assault Girls"

by Chris MaGee

Fans of Mamoru Oshii have had a lot to get excited about in the past couple weeks with the news of his upcoming feature length take on his "Assault Girl 2" segment from last year's "Kiru = Kill" omnibus film. That segment featured Rinko Kikuchi battling it out with actress Yoko Fujita in a semi-futuristic wasteland, and we've already seen images from this new feature film, simply titled "Assault Girls", but fans are still wondering what the action in what promises to be this action-packed production will look like... in action. Okay, that sentence fizzled out, sorry.

One thing we do know is that most of the dialogue is being dubbed into English, something that star Meisa Kuroki (above) has said she is finding rather difficult, but not as difficult as all of the acting she has to do opposite a green scren that will be filled with sci-fi settings later on. “I had to imagine the fight," she explains in an interview with Japan Today, "and honestly, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing.”

I think one of the best indicators of what could end up going on on screen during "Assault Girls" comes from the earliest incarnation of Oshii's imaginary universe. "Assault Girl: Kentucky no Hinako" starring Hinako Saeki was included in Oshii's 2007 film "Shin-Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden", one of the many loose sequels to his partially live-action film " Tachiguishi Retsuden (Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters)". In it we're taken on a wild ride as Saeki's character air drops to the surface of a hostile planet inhabited by the "sand whales" that are said to make their appearance again in "Assault Girls". Fasten your seatbelts, this is going to be a bumpy ride!